_Situations (steep slopes excepted) with cold till subsoil, nearly impervious to water._—The larch succeeds worst when moorish dead sand alone, or with admixture of peat, occupies the surface of these retentive bottoms. Where the whole soil and subsoil is one uniform, retentive, firm till, it will often reach considerable size before being attacked by the rot. When this heavy till occupies a steep slope, the larch will sometimes succeed well, owing to the more equable supply of moisture, and the water in the soil not stagnating, but gliding down the declivity. In general, soils whose surface assumes the appearance of honeycomb in time of frost, owing to the great quantity of water imbibed by the soil, will not produce large sound larch. More than half the low country of Scotland is soil of this description. _Soft sand soil and subsoil._—Sand is still less adapted for growing larch than the tills, the plants being often destroyed by the summer’s drought before they attain size for any useful purpose: the rot also attacks earlier here than in the tills. It appears that {87} light sand, sloping considerably on moist back-lying alpine situations, covered towards the south by steep hill, will sometimes produce sound larch; whereas did the same sand occupy a dry front or lowland situation, the larch would not succeed in it. The same moist back situation that conduces to produce sound larch in light dry soils, may probably tend to promote rot in the wet. The moisture and the less evaporation of altitude diminishing the tendency to rot in dry light sand, and increasing it in wet till. Larch will sometimes succeed well in sharp dry alluvial sand left by rivulets. _Soils incumbent on brittle dry trap, or broken slaty sandstone._—Although soil, the debris of trap, be generally much better adapted for the production of herbaceous vegetables than that of sandstone or freestone, yet larch does not seem to succeed much better on the former than the latter. The deeper superior soils, generally incumbent on the recent dark red sandstone, are better suited for larch than the shallow inferior soils incumbent on the old grey and red sandstone. _Ground having a subsoil of dry rotten rock, and which sounds hollow to the foot in time of drought._ _Rich deaf earth, or vegetable {88} mould._—Independently of receiving ultimate contamination from the putrid juices or exhalations of this soil, the larch does not seem, even while remaining sound, to make so much comparative progress of growth, as some of the hard wood trees, as elm, ash, plane. _Black or grey moorish soils, with admixture of peat-moss._